Number Of Homeless Surges In Cities Across U.s.

December 18, 2001|By Pam Belluck The New York Times

With unemployment rising and housing costs still high, cities are experiencing a new and sudden wave of homelessness, a new study says. Shelters are overflowing, and more people this year are sleeping on floors in dingy social-service centers, living in cars or spending nights on the streets.

In New York, Boston and several other cities, homelessness is at record levels, a consequence of a faltering economy that has crumbled even further as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks.

A survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors of 27 cities released last week found that requests for emergency shelter had increased an average of 13 percent over last year. The report said the increases were 26 percent in Trenton, N.J.; 25 percent in Kansas City, Mo.; 22 percent in Chicago; 20 percent in Denver; and 20 percent in New Orleans.

An unusual confluence of factors seems to be responsible for the surge. Housing prices, which soared in the expansion of the 1990s, have not gone down, even though the economy has tumbled. So fewer and fewer people can afford places to live.

A stream of layoffs has newly unemployed people taking low-wage jobs that might have otherwise gone to the poor. In addition, charitable donations to programs that help the disadvantaged are down considerably, officials around the country said, because of the economy and the outpouring of donations for people affected by Sept. 11.

"This is an unprecedented convergence of calamities," said Xavier De Souza Briggs, an assistant professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. "It's really a crisis."

Shelters and city officials said people were staying homeless for longer periods, months instead of days in many cases.

There is no total number for the homeless nationwide. Experts said it was difficult to compare the situation to statistics in previous decades, because counting methods have improved. Yet, several experts said they thought the increases reported by cities like Boston and New York reflected a national trend.

"My impression is there is more homelessness now than there was 20 years ago," said Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution. Burtless said he thought that economic factors were not the sole explanation.